[grawk]

Are you going to call up John Grado and ask him what makes the HF-1 and RS-1 different, aside from the cups? Or the RS-1 vs the RS-2?

 

[ericj]

Come on, John might actually tell you.

It's more like when i asked the guy at the ink cartridge refill place in the mall how to keep an ink cartridge from drying out during the 6 months between times when i have a need to print.

He basically said he wouldn't tell me. Told me that if i bought ink from him, i could bring the cartridge back and he'd prep it for storage for me.

So I never bought anything from him.

 

[oicdn]

To keep the ink from drying out, don't run it empty. Leave a little in there for them to suck it out when they refill it, keeps the heads "primed and moist" so to speak.

Nobody would EXPECT a manufacturer to divulge "secrets", but also wouldn't expect a community to NOT EVER be curious about what's being done to their headphones while in his possession.

As said, if anything it can only help the community as a whole by progression. Anybody have some darths, lol.

 

[markl]

"Dear Coca-Cola,
Hi, I'm an avid soft-drink hobbyist, I like to make soda in my basement. I would like to make to make some Coca-Cola because I don't like paying your price for it. Please e-mail me the recipe and specific instructions on how to mix it together so I can post it on a soda-making forum for all my friends to see and copy at will.

Yours,
Numbscull"

 

[Deathwish238]

Quote:

Originally Posted by grawk /img/forum/go_quote.gif Are you going to call up John Grado and ask him what makes the HF-1 and RS-1 different, aside from the cups? Or the RS-1 vs the RS-2?

Why wouldn't he tell you? It should be no secret. No one is going to copy it and expect to get away with it

Perhaps headphile needs to protect themselves legally...

 

[grawk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deathwish238 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Why wouldn't he tell you? It should be no secret. No one is going to copy it and expect to get away with it Perhaps headphile needs to protect themselves legally...

Ok, call him up and ask.

 

[grawk]

It's easy to be critical of how others protect the things they do to earn a living. Open source works for some people. The larger the market for what oyu're doing, the easier it is to rely on consulting fees and referrals vs protecting your techniques and ideas. With grado vs sennheiser, or headphile vs every other diyer who doesn't really care if he makes a profit, there's a fine line between supporting the community (both grado and larry support headfi in any number of ways) and giving away your business and having to do something else for a living.

It's like accusing a band of selling out. It's not selling out if it enables you to do what you love instead of working at a fast food restaurant forever.

 

[Deathwish238]

I sent them an e-mail...let's see what they say...

 

[Deathwish238]

Quote:

Originally Posted by grawk /img/forum/go_quote.gif It's easy to be critical of how others protect the things they do to earn a living. Open source works for some people. The larger the market for what oyu're doing, the easier it is to rely on consulting fees and referrals vs protecting your techniques and ideas. With grado vs sennheiser, or headphile vs every other diyer who doesn't really care if he makes a profit, there's a fine line between supporting the community (both grado and larry support headfi in any number of ways) and giving away your business and having to do something else for a living. It's like accusing a band of selling out. It's not selling out if it enables you to do what you love instead of working at a fast food restaurant forever.

True, but I'm pretty confident that if I were to obtain a pair I could reverse engineer them without much trouble(given that I have the right tools and resources). Especially with the help of a community like this.


Competition is best for consumers.

In a competitive industry, no one makes much profit at all as people will keep coming in for a piece of the pie if there is a large enough profit.

So...then why don't many others come in and mod headphones as well?

 

[markl]

Quote:

Competition is best for consumers.

You can't compete with "free". If there is no profit margin to be made because nothing can be kept proprietary, guess what happens? Total stagnation, no inovation, dead market.

 

[grawk]

Competition is only good for customers if it's actual innovation. Copying others designs is bad for the community, because it gets people to stop innovating.

 

[SuperNothing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deathwish238 /img/forum/go_quote.gif In a competitive industry, no one makes much profit at all as people will keep coming in for a piece of the pie if there is a large enough profit. So...then why don't many others come in and mod headphones as well?

Because headphone modding is a tiny market as are high end headphones in general. There isn't enough profit to have many people modding headphones.

 

[Rav]

Quote:

Originally Posted by grawk /img/forum/go_quote.gif But there are other vendors who have decided to directly compete with Mr. Dale's products, specifically by woodying grados for profit. He's a small business, worked hard to define a niche and make a decidedly mediocre product something significantly more. The time was in the experimentation, figuring out what worked and didn't. If people recreate his work, he loses out on that. It's flat out rude to try and duplicate what he's doing and undercut his market.

This comment irks me a bit, there's nothing stopping ALO (who i assume you are referring to) or anyone else from offering a similar service to headphile. Ultimately, competition benefits the consumer. I happen to prefer the look of ALO's woody Grados over Headphile's, for instance.

What i agree with is that to take apart and clone a Darth Beyer is morally, if not legally, unsound, but there's nothing stopping another vendor from offering a Beyer modification service, nothing at all.

 

[Deathwish238]

Quote:

Originally Posted by markl /img/forum/go_quote.gif You can't compete with "free". If there is no profit margin to be made because nothing can be kept proprietary, guess what happens? Total stagnation, no inovation, dead market.

Free? What in this world is free?

Me getting the materials for free and doing it myself is still not free. I'm paying with my time

Quote:

Originally Posted by grawk /img/forum/go_quote.gif Competition is only good for customers if it's actual innovation. Copying others designs is bad for the community, because it gets people to stop innovating.

Not true, competition drives prices down to an equalized level. Right now headphile is in essence a monopoly as he controls the majority of the market. He sets the prices and not much will force him to lower prices.

Plus, wanting to create a higher profit and stay on top will force companies to come out with a new innovation.

So like you said, innovation is good for customers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SuperNothing /img/forum/go_quote.gif Because headphone modding is a tiny market as are high end headphones in general. There isn't enough profit to have many people modding headphones.

Well then there you go. If there isn't enough profit to attract other people to start selling their own headphone mods then there isn't an issue in the first place

 

[oicdn]

You can compete with free. It's called lazy or uneducated or unwilling people, and you charge them a premium for doing the work for them.

Example? the iMod. It could be done by several DIYers, but many of them are unwilling or unwanting to have to mess with it, so they pay Vinnie to do so. Everybody knows what's involved with the iMod...no magic there, he even states it blatantly on his site. I would say that's just as niche a market as the Darths are and he's doing just fine.

There's ALWAYS competition out there. Open Sources compete with other open sources. All it does is make for a better community buy adding something that the others haven't or can't give.